Robert Hastie: 'Arts subjects aren't being valued by our education system'

After taking over the running of Sheffield Theatres from Daniel Evans in July, Robert Hastie announced his first season as artistic director this month. From gender-swapping Shakespeare, to good old fashioned musicals, Hastie has set out his vision for the theatre and it is ambitious and varied. We chatted with him about his hopes for next year and his intentions behind his radical ticketing overhaul – where the theatre will make tickets free to drama students.

I knew I wanted to do Shakespeare in my first season. The plays that really helped shape what my idea of theatre were the big classic plays: Richard III etc and this theatre was made for them. The Crucible shares its DNA with theatres Shakespeare and his contemporaries wrote for. So for me, especially with what has been going on in the world, I really feel like we needed to do Julius Caesar.

I've been wanting to do Julius Caesar for a long time. The play looks at what a citizen does when people choose the wrong leader. It's relevant with a capital R. It's a play that is orbiting very closely to us at the moment.

It's a very male play. There are only two parts for women, each of whom have barely a scene. So we will be reassigning some genders – making it 50/50 split. I had a very happy experience this year with Michelle Terry in Henry V and I have been lucky enough to be around the Donmar over the last few years whilst Phyllida Lloyd has been doing her groundbreaking work. For me the argument has been made and won for how we have to find ways to open up these beautiful plays to a wider percentage of the population.

I made my professional stage debut at the Crucible. After I finished Rada, I chased Ian McDiarmid around the stage in Edward Bond's Lear. Theatre has never been proscenium arch to me. I am originally from Scarborough and I was lucky that my parents nutured my passion for theatre and took me to the Stephen Joseph. But we used to come to York and Sheffield to see things too.

I have been really excited by the impact of musicals from Sheffield. And I am keen to start building on a reputation for new musicals. We already have Everybody's Talking About Jamie coming up, which is brilliant – but that was before my programming. I didn't have time to get a new one in place for next year so instead we are doing The Wizard of Oz which hasn't been done in Sheffield for more than 20 years.

I have been a musicals fan forever. I was the boy with the original soundtrack. I have been waiting to listen to Hamilton, because I felt as though I should see it, but I caught someone listening to it in rehearsals the other day and I was hooked. I'm like the last person to the party but it is playing on a continuous loop on my iPod.

For my money, Peter Gill is the best adapter of Chekhov. Uncle Vanya is one of the last major plays he hasn't adapted and it's playing in the Studio at Sheffield next year. It's a co-production with Theatr Clwyd and I'm really excited about it. It's playing in one of the smaller spaces because there is a delicacy and intimacy to Gill's Chekhov that I think will really work.

I first saw Gill's work onstage 15-ish years ago in Sheffield. There was a season of his work and Josie Rourke and Rufus Norris – little known talents at the time – directed revivals of his plays. I think you can learn a huge amount from his work as a director, from a scene change alone. I also think Tamara Harvey – who directs – is one of the great things of British Theatre.

Arts subjects, and theatre in particular, are not being given anything like the value that they need to be given in our education system. It's up to the government to make a commitment to giving creative subjects a dignity and validity. We are giving tickets away to any students in Sheffield who are studying drama in school or college. It's an acknowledgement of the diminishing importance placed on live experience when you are studying those subjects. To quote what is on a loop in my head at the moment we want people to be "in the room where it happens."